Duppy Writer

Big Dada;
2010

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American pop's relationship with Jamaican music has always been superficial. Every five or 10 years, we remember the island nation to our south still exists. We briefly import a few Jamaican crossover acts to lend spice to the charts. We absorb a little of its color into our own music. Then we forget about it just as quickly. Ultimately any deep American engagement with Jamaica is still limited to collectors and cultists.

Not so in the UK. Ska, reggae, dancehall, dub are inside of just about every brand of "urban" music Britain has produced in the past 30 years. The best UK hip-hop stood out from its American cousin precisely because its architects were kids immersed in Caribbean sounds since the cradle. That's why Roots Manuva's flow has always been the aspect of his music that's the most "English," the voice of a late-20th-century Londoner surrounded by first-generation Jamaican immigrants, blending the two cadences until they're inseparable. And though American rap hasn't been short on skeletal, synthetic beats, Manuva's rhythm tracks stagger their punches, just like dancehall, in a way that that's been passé in U.S. pop since Timbaland discovered trance.

The best of Manuva's music has always existed in a tense suspension between styles. Too Jamaican to pass for American rap, too full of hip-hop to be simple dancehall fetishism. Thus, UK hip-hop. Occasionally, however, he tips the balance, releasing a dub remix album like Duppy Writer, where old Manuva songs are given radical makeovers by producer Wrongtom, that makes his debt to Jamaica overt, like a kid who grew up spinning Burning Spear and Ninjaman singles returning briefly to his first love. If Manuva's densely packed verses still link him to U.S. indie hip-hop in unspoken opposition to Waka Flocka style shouters, the music on Duppy Writer will have little pull with what's left of the Fat Beats crowd.

On Duppy Writer Roots draws more from, well, roots than he ever has before. Some tracks are indistinguishable from the hazy reggae you'll find on a compilation of classic Trojan 45s, and thankfully these reproduction antiques sound like the warm, fat, analog real-deal rather than the chilly, ersatz synthetic shit that makes up so much neo-roots. When the rhythms do bang, they're closer to Steely and Clevie than Drumma Boi. And instead of keyboard hooks or old funk samples, we get a full slate of lovingly recreated reggae touches: "Sleng Teng"-style basslines, extreme dub echo effects, choppy rhythm guitar doused in reverb.

Manuva sounds perfectly at home here, of course. This is the sound that shaped his voice. Like the classics it evokes, Duppy Writer is loose and likeable, casual-sounding despite the high level of craft involved, probably the most playfully pop album Manuva's ever put his name to, even if the "pop" in question has more do with 1978 or 1988 than 2010. Wrongtom and Manuva realize that Jamaican music has always been dance music, even at its most righteous or menacing. Duppy Writer pulses and breathes with that familiar, laid-back funk, and Manuva's voice dips and booms theatrically to match it, which is kind of amazing considering his verses are essentially unchanged from the original tunes, a small testament to what good remixing is all about. If your interest in Jamaican music is limited, then Duppy Writer will probably be of even less concern to you than the usual Roots Manuva album. But you also shouldn't dismiss an album this end-to-end pleasurable as some dry retro curio.